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The purpose of this paper is to focus on tracing GHG emissions across the supply chain industries associated with the US residential, commercial and industrial building stock and provides optimized GHG reduction policy plans for sustainable development.

A two-step hierarchical approach is developed. First, Economic Input-Output-based Life Cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) is utilized to quantify the GHG emissions associated with the US residential, commercial and industrial building stock. Second, a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) based optimization framework is developed to identify the optimal GHG emissions’ reduction (percent) for each industry across the supply chain network of the US economy.

The results indicated that “ready-mix concrete manufacturing”, “electric power generation, transmission and distribution” and “lighting fixture manufacturing” sectors were found to be the main culprits in the GHG emissions’ stock. Additionally, the majorly responsible industries in the supply chains of each building construction categories were also highlighted as the hot-spots in the supply chains with respect to the GHG emission reduction (percent) requirements.

The decision making in terms of construction-related expenses and energy use options have considerable impacts across the supply chains. Therefore, regulations and actions should be re-organized around the systematic understanding considering the principles of “circular economy” within the context of sustainable development.

Although the literature is abundant with works that address quantifying environmental impacts of building structures, environmental life cycle impact-based optimization methods are scarce. This paper successfully fills this gap by integrating EIO-LCA and MILP frameworks to identify the most pollutant industries in the supply chains of building structures.

Although an emerging field in work and family literature, organization cross domain intervention managing strategies (CDIMS) is an under-researched area. This study aims to investigate whether organization non-monetary CDIMS (control over work hours and supervisor support) have an impact on employee outcomes via the mediating effect work–family balance (WFB).

Data for the study have been gathered in two distinct surveys from 300 employees working at the managerial level in various manufacturing companies of Pakistan with a seven-week time interval to reduce common method variance. Data were collected during January and March 2020. Confirmatory factor analysis has been performed before testing the mediated model.

Organization non-monetary CDIMS i.e. control over work hours and supervisor support has been associated positively with WFB, which has further mediated the relationship between workplace non-monetary CDIMS and employee professional outcomes.

Both supervisor support and control over work hours improve employee outcomes by experiencing the satisfaction with WFB. It has been recommended that organizations embed cross-domain interventions in their job design to benefit all employees impartially. Thus, all employees can enjoy better WFB and show positive work behaviors.

This study demonstrates the effectiveness of non-monetary organization CDIMS in enhancing the experience of employee’s WFB and improving their professional outcomes.

Supplier selection and evaluation are arguably one of the most critical functions for the success of an organization. Several approaches exist in the literature to objectively evaluate suppliers, including analytic hierarchy process and total cost of ownership. Analytic hierarchy process provides a framework to cope with multiple criteria situations involving supplier selection, while the total cost of ownership is a methodology and philosophy, which look beyond just the price of a purchase to better understand and manage costs in selecting and maintaining relationships with suppliers. This paper illustrates the two approaches and provides a comparison.

A major frustration for most policy researchers in the small to medium‐sized enterprise (SME) area is the virtual non‐existence of scientific data on this sector in the country. This paper aims to provide some data.

A survey of 651 SMEs from the manufacturing sector of Pakistan was conducted in 2003 and statistical analysis was carried out to analyze the data. This paper focuses on the relationship between the health indicators namely, sales/employee, increase/decrease in sales, and investment plans and the different personal characteristics of the owner/entrepreneur.

This analysis suggests that education, generation setting up the business, and number of partners have a significant relationship with the health of SMEs. Health of the firm is also dependent on owner habits like watching television, reading newspapers and using computers for office work. Other factors like caste of the owner and occupation of the owner's relatives were also analyzed, but no significant relationship with the health of an SME was observed.

The implications of this study are far reaching in understanding the profiles of owners of SMEs in Pakistan and how these profiles impact the profitability of the firms.

To date no other such study has been carried out in Pakistan. Similar studies on owner profiles have previously been carried out in other countries such as the UK and USA.

The purpose of this research is to provide a window into the supply chain practices of the small and medium enterprise sector in Pakistan.

The Small and Medium Enterprise Center (SMEC) at the Lahore University of Management Sciences undertook a survey in 2003 to gauge the health of this sector. A survey of 650 firms in ten districts in the country was conducted. This paper presents the results and analyses of the supply chain practices of these SMEs.

There is dearth of independent data and research in the field of SME's in Pakistan. This paper provides a window to the supply chain practices of SME's in Pakistan and will enable future researchers to use this research as a building block in understanding these practices and the factors that pertain to successful firms.

The implications of this study are far reaching enabling trainers, consultants, donor agencies, and entrepreneurs in the SME sector to learn the practices of successful firms and adopt/help SMEs adopt these in their operations.

This paper we report some of the results of the survey and our analysis of factors related to supply chain management practices that seem to correlate with the health of the enterprise. The analysis shows that successful firms on average had more products, more customers as well as more new customers. SMEs into exports were the healthiest and exhibited most dynamic characteristics, followed by those that sold to OEMs. Another interesting insight is that growing firms sold more directly to end users while firms with higher sales per employee sold the least to the end user.

A major frustration for most policy researchers in the SME area is the virtual non‐existence of scientific data on this sector in the country. This is the first survey of its kind in Pakistan.

The essence of benchmarking is the process of identifying the highest standards of excellence for products, services, or processes, and then making the improvements necessary to reach those standards – commonly called “best practices”. Various companies have adopted benchmarking and customized the methodology to suit their needs. A five‐step benchmarking model is suggested in this paper as a model to be used when undertaking a benchmarking study. Two case studies are enumerated and a comparison presented.

This study aims to identify the factors and propose a conceptual framework for the civil aviation industry from the sustainability perspective with the participation of international entrepreneurs. Based on the results of this study, international decision-makers and entrepreneurs in the civil aviation transportation industry will better understand their decision-making processes. A combination of interpretive structural modelling (ISM) and matrix-based multiplication applied to a classification (MICMAC) was used to classify practical factors to depict a conceptual model based on their level and classification in the sustainable supply chain (SSC) of the civil aviation transportation industry. In this study, special attention has been paid to the issue of sustainability as an essential mechanism for developing international entrepreneurship in the civil aviation transportation industry. The factor of flexibility in service production was identified as the driver factor; the factors of organisational commitment to a SSC were found to have the highest driver-dependent power that can attract international entrepreneurs in this field.

It has been suggested that much of the potential inefficiencies associated with supply chain management (SCM) costs can be traced to wasteful practices such as inefficient, unnecessary, or redundant stocking practices, or inefficient transportation. The purpose of this paper is to develop a model which reconciles many of these inefficiencies by integrating production factors, purchasing, inventory, and trucking decisions for optimizing supply chain costs between first‐, and second‐tier suppliers and subsequent OEM customers.

The modeling technique is mathematical programming tested in a simulation model. In an effort to determine the significance of the transportation component of the proffered model, the fully developed model is differentially tested, including standard production variables varying transportation costs, paired with similar instances of the model in which the transportation costs are fixed.

Significant differences are found in the predictive abilities of the respective models, and this supplies pragmatic evidence of the important role that transportation issues play in the consideration of integrated SCM costs.

The key limitation to this finding lies in the validation process. As suggested by Sargent, Monte‐Carlo studies are useful for validation purposes, and the supply chain optimization model (MHSCM) is certainly confirmed through this particular simulation.

The managerial focus on transportation management and cost control in SCM can be highlighted as a critical implication of the study.

The structure of the MHSCM is robust, and may be useful for cost‐control planning purposes in a dynamic environment, subject to certain limitations accruing to the methodology.

The purpose of this paper is to provide strategic recommendations for Indian hotel administrators for improving sustainability practices: environment, economic and social with respect to the supply chain members by analyzing performance dimensions and the importance attached to them.

Importance performance analysis is a tool to analyze the perception of top-level, middle-level and first-level managers in hotels. Questionnaire is developed to collect the hotel manager’s perceptions. The snowball sampling method is used for data collection.

The paper introduces specific sustainability practices, namely, environment, economic and social factors, at the interface of the tourism supply chain (TSC). This will allow the hotels to identify the importance and performance of various sustainability practices to achieve a long-term competitive advantage. The present work finds that the responding hotel managers have given highest importance to the sustainability practices within the organization and the hotel manager’s perception of sustainability practices in the TSC will vary with respect to the supply chain members.

The effort has been made to capture specific sustainability practices across the supply chain. The paper reinstates the fact that sustainability practices are not firm specific and should be practiced at the supply chain interface. The data for the study were taken from focal organizations perspective which is the hotels.

Results provide the hotel administrators to develop appropriate strategies to improve their practices and functions by analyzing their strengths and weakness regarding their tangible and intangible assets. The identified sustainability practice attributes can act as a benchmark and drive the hotel industry toward possible cost-saving conditions by prioritizing the allocation of the resources while taking care of overall performance.

Results will help the hotel administrators to identify the better sustainability practices which will reduce the negative effects and protect the Mother Nature.

The study included hotels/resorts from tourism locations: hill station, backwaters and coastal areas, specifically in the Indian context.

This study determines the relationship between small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their support providers during three phases: pre-conflict environment, during conflict environment, and the post-conflict (uncertain) environment with the reference to institutional theory in the northwest region of Pakistan where there is ongoing unrest between the authorities and the insurgents.

Using a qualitative approach, a total of 23 semi-structured interviews were conducted, 19 with the owner-managers of small manufacturing firms and 4 from small business support providers in the region.

The authors theorise the changing role of support agencies as differing institutional gaps, while conflict is destructive for SMEs and support agencies; paradoxically the crisis results in stronger relationships between the support providers and SMEs which was weaker in the pre-conflict environment. Such stronger relationship enhanced the cognitive pillar of institutional theory where entrepreneurship is supported by various groups including government agencies and SMEs to alleviate unemployment in the region which is one of the potential reasons of terrorism in the country.

The study may have value for policymakers who need to know more about how small businesses and support providers develop a support network in difficult regions and give a comprehensive framework to other conflictual regions who face similar circumstances.

This research contributes to the previous literature in several ways. First, the study reveals the impact of conflict environment on small businesses and support providers where a little research has been undertaken. Second, the study shows the support mechanism in three different intervals pre-conflict, during the conflict and post-conflict and how the Talibanization in the region has a positive impact by strengthening the support structure among small businesses and support providers. Finally, the study contributes to the growing body of literature on entrepreneurship in conflict environments.